Petitioners Dr S.C. Saxena of Delhi University and nine other academicians have also asked for the present Executive Committee to be disbanded and the appointment of a ``receiver'' for day-to-day management of the council till a new management is formed.

The petition comes in the wake of the Standing Committee report last year which called for a government take-over of the Council, which houses one of the best libraries on international relations. Sapru House, as the ICWA is better known, was started in 1944. It was bifurcated in 1971 when the School of International Studies was transferred to the Jawaharlal Neh-ru University campus.

In 1990, I.K. Gujral initiated a take-over of the institution which was never successfully completed. Ever since, the Sapru House has been part of parliamentary debates and committees set up to decide its fate. ``The take-over did not work out then,'' recalls Gujral. ``But the intention to save a great library has always been on.'' Government grants to the organisation, however, were frozen in the early '90s.

According to the petition, the ICWA and its library are today in a state of total disarray and invaluable books and documents are in a sad state. Further, it states that there are no facilities for the few members that frequent the library today. Saxena says: ``There was a time when it was difficult to find a single vacant seat in the library, but today it presents a gloomy and deserted look. There has been an all-round decline at the hands of the present management.

The ICWA is at present under the chairmanship of Harcharan Singh Josh. He is being held responsible for the decline of the Council. The 1997 audit report of ICWA highlights the extent to which the organisation has degenerated. The audit indicates a paucity of funds. According to the report, the accumulated deficit of the council up to March 31, 1997 was Rs 11,68,595.

One of the main reasons attributed to this is ``the non-receipt of grant-in-aid from the government, from the financial year 1987-88 onward for the running and maintenance of the library''.

This deficit is despite the fact that ICWA is rented out for functions, which is apparently its main source of income at present. There are frequent conferences, student functions that take place here and marriages are solemnised on the lawns of Sapru House.

Yet, the petition states that in the reading room there are very few periodicals worth mentioning. Most of the reading material found here are embassy publications, generally distributed free or in exchange of India Quarterly, the library's own journal. In addition it also receives publications of UNESCO, WHO, UNIDO, IMF and other world organisations.

In 1970, the council's collection of books and periodicals available in the library were 66,076. Though this number subsequently increased in the '80s, the number of new books bought each year kept decreasing. In 1980, 578 books were bought. Three years later in 1983, the organisation invested in just 353 books. In 1985, Sapru House bought 72 new books. Between 1980 and '85 the total number of books bought were only 1,931.

Every year there are some books added to the dwindling collection, but there are indifferent records and maintenance is poor. Reports on the library clearly state that it is deficient in its collection of basic reference works. It also states that the council has not been able to purchase basic reference tools such as Europe Yearbooks, World of Learning, among others.

In fact, the audit report suggests: ``We recommend that modern methods of preservation of the same like micro films and monitors be installed in the library, material should be transferred on longer-lasting recording methods''.